How To Make A DIY Sharpie Mug That’s Washable!

DIY Sharpie mugs are all the rage now; they’re great because you can completely personalize them and they make great gifts for birthdays or holidays! The only problem is, there are tons of different methods, and some of them don’t work as well as others. Sometimes the color washes away or chips off, but today I’m sharing my favorite tried and true method for making a DIY Sharpie mug that is totally washable!

I made these cute polka dot mugs by drawing polka dots on top of an adhesive sticker, then peeling the sticker away. But you can make these mugs however you want! If you want to use the paint markers to fill in a stencil or draw freehand, they will still turn out great! As long as you use oil-based paint pens and follow the instructions below, you’ll end up with washable DIY Sharpie mugs!

Once these mugs are baked, you can definitely hand wash them in warm, soapy water. The paint doesn’t come off if you lightly scratch at it with your nail, and it won’t come off with handwashing either. I have tried these in the top rack of the dishwasher as well, and they were still fine when the dishwasher was done! (The dishwasher definitely puts more wear and tear on the mug, so I don’t know how well the paint will hold up years from now. For the longevity of the paint, I suggest handwashing the mugs, but if you need to throw them in the dishwasher, they’ll still survive!)

How To Make A DIY Sharpie Mug That’s Washable!

Here’s what you need for your Sharpie mug: (affiliate links below to the products I use and recommend)

nail polish remover and q-tips for cleaning up any mistakes or smudges

oven

Make sure you have oil-based paint markers; this is super important! Regular Sharpie markers and the water-based Sharpie paint markers will just wash off! The oil-based Sharpie paint markers have a red/pink band at the bottom (I think the water-based ones have a blue band).

Start by cleaning your mug with rubbing alcohol and cotton balls. If you don’t clean the mug, the paint may be sitting on top of dirt and grease left by your fingers. This may cause the paint to adhere poorly while baking, which can cause it to wash off later. After you clean the mug, do your best not to touch the surface you plan to paint; hold the mug by the handle if possible.

I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out text from a scrap of adhesive vinyl. You can also use stickers, but I wanted a specific phrase, so I made mine custom. 🙂 (By the way, if I had to do this again I would use a thicker font; in the finished mugs the font is totally legible through the polka dots, but it’s not super obvious from far away.)

If you make your own stickers, weed away the extra vinyl around the letters, then put a piece of transfer tape over the whole design. Press down well so that the transfer tape sticks to the vinyl letters.

Peel the transfer tape up and the vinyl should come up with it! Position the design on your mug and press it on. Then gently peel the transfer tape away, leaving the vinyl on your mug.

Now it’s time to add the polka dots! The paint markers don’t dry immediately like a regular marker does, so you need to be a little careful not to smudge your design as you go. The dots will be dry in about thirty seconds to a minute, but it still helps to start in the center and work your way outward so your hand doesn’t rest on the dots you just painted.

Just in case you do accidentally smudge your design or make a mistake and want to remove some paint, all you need is nail polish remover! Put some nail polish remover on a q-tip and gently wipe away the smudge. I accidentally smudged some paint onto the handle, and just below the handle you can see a “polka dot” that looks more like a short line. Nail polish remover on a q-tip fixed them both!

Pick a color and start making polka dots in the center of your design. Fill in about a 1 inch area with polka dots.

If you’re planning on using multiple colors, you need to work in stages, from the inside out, for all colors. For every additional color you want to add, fill in the same 1 inch area with polka dots in a new color, until you’ve added all the colors you wish to.

When you’re filling in an area with polka dots, you want to be pretty sure you’ve covered all the white areas with your polka dots. Be especially careful around the edges of your stickers; if those areas are still white when you remove the stickers, it will mess up the clean lines of your letters.

Once your 1 inch area is filled with polka dots, go back to your first color and add more polka dots in a ring around the 1 inch area. Remember to not do more than about an inch of polka dots at a time, or your hand may smudge the dots as you add your additional colors.

Fill the ring in with polka dots in your additional colors, then start another ring with your original color.

And so on and so on! Continue adding polka dots, working your way out from the center. If you want to, you can “fade” your polka dots out once you’re past the stickers. The stickers have to be totally covered in polka dots, but as you move further out, the dots can be spaced further apart.

Let the dots dry for about ten minutes, then start peeling up your stickers to reveal the words below!

And you’re done with the painting part!

Set your mugs aside to dry for about 24 hours. You want to make sure the paint has really set into the mug before you bake it, otherwise the paint won’t stick as well and may wash off later.

After 24 hours, put your mugs in a cold oven on a cookie sheet. Then start preheating the oven to 425 degrees. Some other Sharpie mug methods say 350 or 375, but the hotter the oven, the more the original white glaze will melt and allow your Sharpie paint to set in, so I like to bake my mugs at 425.

By putting the mugs in the cold oven and allowing them to preheat along with the oven, you reduce the risk of them cracking from sudden changes in temperature.

Once the oven is done pre-heating and has reached 425 degrees, leave the mugs in the oven and set a timer for 30 minutes. As the mugs bake, the paint may start to smell. The smell is normal, but you can open a window or turn on a fan to help air out your kitchen.

After 30 minutes, turn the oven off, but leave the mugs in the oven. Again, you want to let the mugs cool down along with the oven so that they don’t crack from a sudden temperature change.

Once the oven has cooled down, pull out your mugs, and you’re done!

See what I mean about the thicker font? It’s totally legible, but it isn’t smack-you-in-the-face obvious. So if you’re looking for obvious, maybe just do someone’s initials, or a single monogram, rather than a whole sentence.

I made one for my mom as well!

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Hi, I'm Jessi! Welcome to Practically Functional, a DIY and crafts blog for everyone! I believe that anyone can do crafts and DIY projects, regardless of skill or experience.
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Comments

Hi Jessi. Great article. It was very helpful.
So I made a few as gifts and now one of my friends wants to buy a whole bunch of them from me. But i’m having trouble figuring out the pricing of the raw materials. Do you know how many mugs you can make before a pen/pack of pens runs out?

Hmm good question. I’ve made about seven mugs and the pens haven’t run out yet, but I really have no idea how long they would last. I imagine you could probably do at least 20 mugs, but I really don’t know. Sorry I couldn’t be more help!

I had the same thing happen. Pink turned mauve, which was ok, but yellow, green, blue all turned a murky grey-brown, purple was a really muddy darker, almost brown, red turned dark, dark purple-maroon. The only colors that resembled their original were silver and black, which stayed perfectly, and gold, but the gold lost its sparkle. And the black on a mug started chipping off soon after. I followed the instructions to a T. I am going to try a colder temp, which has worked for a friend, and try again. So bummed.

Yeah, probably! I’ve only tried it using the paint pens, but I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work with the same oil based paint using a paintbrush instead. Just be careful not to paint it on too thick; if the paint is too thick it will flake off later when you wash it.

Oh no! I waited until the last minute to make this, how important is it that the paint dries for 24 hours before baking?? Side note: I’ve made these before using your method and they came out great!! Thanks

Let them dry as long as you can; the longer they dry the more the paint can “soak in” to the mug. I’ve never tried it sooner, but it should be fine, especially if you’re hand washing the mugs, or only putting them in the top rack of the dishwasher.

Oh no! It might be because the IKEA mugs are a higher quality; weirdly, this does better with cheapo mugs from the dollar store because the glaze melts more when you bake the mug which allows the pens to set in more. I might try with a really inexpensive mug, and let the Sharpies dry for at least 24 hours before you bake them to help cure the ink. You can also try bumping up the oven temperature a bit and see if that helps.

Oh no, what a bummer! What color did the marker turn? I did mention in the post that the markers get darker when you put the mugs in the oven, but I’ve never had it completely change color, like from red to green!

Wow, way to blame your “ruined Christmas presents” on someone else when a craft that worked for them didn’t work for you. Very Christmas-spirit of you. It’s a;ways best to test-run stuff like this to work out the kinks before placing all your hopes for a final project on it. Different materials (i.e. mugs) may lead to different results too. And she was quite clear that colored markers change color when baked!!

Thanks for the article Jessi! My daughter and I will attempt this. We used a regular Sharpie the first time only to find out it definitely does NOT work! LOL We ordered the oil based and are praying for a good outcome since she already has 60 pre-orders to fill!!!

It’s safest to hand wash them so that you can be gentle around the painted areas. I know people who have put them in the top rack of the dishwasher and they’ve been okay so far, but I’ve also heard stories where people put them in the dishwasher and it immediately ruined the paint job! I only handwash my mugs and they’ve held up for almost 2 years so far with no issues!

I Bake them at 250 for 2-hours and waited to let the oven cool, we used oil based sharpies – the color didn’t change or turn a different color. It baked it in pretty good. That’s what I did anyway….( I had the same problem prior of the color changing or washing off- this time no issues so far)

They are at Target. Although their online prices are much cheaper…but they do price match. I bought a 2 pack (gold and silver) for $2.69. I have mine in the oven cooling now. And I so hope they turn out right because they are a gift 🙂

My colors also changed, but not too dramatically. The blue when to a green but the pink just looks like a pale pink! However, on one of my cups there is a bunch of brown stuff, it kind of looks like it burnt the cup. Has this ever happened to you? All of my other cups didn’t have this on it, so i wonder if it’ll wash off or what.

It hasn’t happened to me, but I have heard from other people that if there’s too much ‘liquid’ on the paint line that it can burn up and turn brown. Their solution was to try to draw thin lines where the paint doesn’t pool up anywhere.

I tried this on dollar store plates and sadly my paint faded away as well as changed colors. I followed all instructions and used the same oil based sharpies. I have no clue where I went wrong. I will try again but perhaps at a lower temp.

One thing I’ve noticed is that the original ceramic glaze on dollar store plates and mugs is lower quality than what you might find at other stores, so this method doesn’t work as well on dollar store stuff. 🙁

No, once they’re baked I just hand-wash them. The only way to really get something permanent is to glaze the ceramic before it’s fired in a kiln, so unless you can get the mug heated up to kiln levels again to melt the original glaze, it won’t be as permanent as the original color. But it does stand up to washing after you bake it, unlike other methods which you still can’t wash.

So I did a design using red,blue and black colors. Using oil based sharpie markers. Did the 425 for 30 minutes. The blue and red colors turned purple. Black stayed the same. I have been working on this design for a lady who wanted 20 of them. 6 I have to start all over again. From another post I saw baking at 250 for 2 hrs is the best. So I’m going to try that and hopefully that’ll work.

I’ve heard from other people that some of the colors tend to darken. I didn’t have that problem but I used gold and silver so maybe the metallic effects had something to do with it. I hope the lower temp for longer works for you! Let me know how it goes!